Editors ́ Picks

Open borders the only way forward

“Open borders are the simplest and most effective way to help asylum seekers.”

This is what migration researcher François Gemenne told German magazine Stern in an interview last weekend.

Gemenne, a migration specialist who lectures at Sciences Po and the Free University of Brussels, argues that opening or closing borders have no influence over whether desperate migrants choose to make their journeys.

Gemenne says the ineffectiveness of closed borders is evident worldwide.

“Another example,” he explains in the interview, “the wall between the US and Mexico.It has not changed the number of Mexican immigrants.”

“The same goes for the opening of the border between India and Nepal. The will to emigrate depends on structural factors that are beyond any migration policy: poverty, hunger, war.

“If we allow people to come by plane or ferry, they will not have to drown in the sea.”

And yet, the EU has invested almost 1.3 billion EUR in border control and defense against migrants since 2009.

Gemenne says directing resources towards border control is a waste of money.

“Ever the idea to try to control or restrict migration is absurd. These are people who run for their lives. And no border in the world will stop them in their fear of death.”

“Then there are those who are sent to allow their family or community a better life,” he explains. “ These people have often saved money for years. The survival of many people depends on them – they can also not be stopped by any border.”

“What will increase in the future, is migration due to changing environmental conditions. Climate refugees. We must finally rethink and accept migration as part of our reality.”

“We still haven’t internalized the idea that migration is a part of our reality – and a fundamental right of every human being.”

17.Aug

August 17th, 2015

Trump: saving America, and the world.

EDITOR:

Gurmeet Singh, Berlin

After weeks of hot air comes the hot air balloon: Donald Trump has finally outlined some policies. He probably won’t win the Republican nomination – which many analysts predict will go to Jeb Bush (a story in itself). And he’s obviously using the campaign to bolster his biggest and most successful brand – himself. Now, none of this is either incredibly important or interesting – outrageous people in the media exist perennially, and become marginally more interesting during election times. What is interesting however, is not only how popular Donald Trump seems, but how uncritically his remarks are accepted.

The Guardian also mentions that Trump is opposed to abortion except in cases of rape or incest, or where the mother’s life is at risk. He also said he’d cut funding to Planned Parenthood, a women’s health organisation if it continued to provide abortions.

Global politics is complex. So complex that to subsume it under a single narrative leads to all kinds of errors, if not actual lives lost (think of the good vs. bad idea we’ve heard since the Cold War – and something that continues in Trump’s policies). I certainly don’t pretend to have any answers – but Mr. Trump’s supporters continue to live in a fantasy-land where a single person’s (a rich, white, American man’s) bombastic speeches and mercenary ideas will save the world. “Take back the oil fields”, “deport illegal immigrants”, “review abortion laws”: not only will Trump restore the global order, he will set American demographics aright, as well as realigning its moral compass.

As I said, it’s probably not that important that Trump has said these things – he’s probably not going to win. It’s important for him to continue to be in the limelight, however, and if being a loudmouth, if sometimes entertaining, crank gets him there, then that’s fine by him. That’s obviously not to say Trump is the problem; he’s only an extreme case of politics and media obsessed with image and sound-bite.

But around the globe, there’s not only a feeling of fatigue for this very American charade of fantasy and privilege, there’s a real desire to let the hot air balloon sail on, so the real business of carrying out helpful politics can continue.

Image: The Guardian

14.Aug

August 14th, 2015

Rape enshrined in the name of Allah

EDITOR:

Ama Lorenz

“In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.” Thus the story begins in the New York Times and actually you do not want to read more. But there is more to know and nobody should close his eyes. Author Rukmini Callimachi delivers an extraordinary account of the ISIS’ extensively planned sex and slave trade centred on Yazidi women. Pre-teen girls are sold and then raped in order for their rapists to feel closer to God.

Rapes in the name of Allah are one of the terrible things that ISIS’, the self-proclaimed Islamic state that's attempting to establish a caliphate across large areas of Iraq and Syria, justifies, even more: demands.

The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution.

According to the NYT article a total of 5,270 Yazidis were abducted last year, and at least 3,144 are still being held.

Human Rights Watch reports about 11 women and 9 girls, who had escaped between September 2014 and January 2015. Half, including two 12-year-old girls, said they had been raped – some multiple times and by several ISIS fighters. Nearly all of them said they had been forced into marriage; sold, in some cases a number of times; or given as “gifts.” The women and girls also witnessed other captives being abused.

Many survivors of sexual violence are still not receiving the full help and support they desperately need. Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Advisor, Donatella Rovera demands: “The Kurdistan Regional Government, UN and other humanitarian organizations who are providing medical and other support services to survivors of sexual violence must step up their efforts. They must ensure they are swiftly and proactively reaching out to all those who may need them, and that women and girls are made aware of the support available to them.”

While the news sites keep being covered by the so-called Islamic State and related terror and anti-terror activities, the Syrian government forces continue to operate with terror and illegal barrel bombs against civilians - hardly covered by the news.

Now, again, a series of barrel bombs dropped by Syria's government has killed at least 75 people and wounded dozens others in Aleppo province, according to medical sources and a monitoring group reports Al Jazeera today.

The deaths occurred in two separate incidents on Saturday when helicopters dropped explosives-filled barrels, which are deemed illegal under international law.

One barrel bomb hit the rebel-held Shaar neighbourhood of Aleppo, killing at least 20 people, most of them from the same family, local activists have told Al Jazeera.

In the second attack, at least 55 people were killed after bombs hit a busy market in al-Bab city - about 40km northeast of Aleppo city, which is controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which documents violence through a network of activists on the ground, dubbed the al-Bab attack as a "massacre", adding that the number of dead likely would rise because many of the wounded were in critical condition.

Since months, according to a report by Amnesty International, sheer terror and unbearable suffering has forced many civilians in Aleppo to eke out an existence underground to escape the relentless aerial bombardment of opposition-held areas by government forces."

More than a thousand refugees are currently locked inside a stadium on the Greek island of Kos as authorities there struggle to process the vast numbers.

The refugees, mostly Syrian and Afghan, need to be registered before they can move further on to other parts of Europe.

In an attempt to maintain order, the police used a sonic explosion, as well as fire extinguishers, to try to control the crowd which is not only distressed but also lacking food and water.

Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), there to provide medical care, reported refugees fainting from heatstroke after spending many hours waiting in the sun.

The tension became so great in the stadium last night that the MSF team chose to withdraw at one point, returning this morning to find the refugees still locked inside the stadium awaiting processing.

Julia Kourafa, a spokeswoman for MSF at the stadium, said: “It was becoming a bit uncontrollable, the situation, and there was a complete lack of coordination. It was just the police there, no UNHCR [the UN’s refugee agency], and no security for [our] team.”

Kourafa added: “This is the first time we’ve seen this in Greece – people locked inside a stadium and controlled by riot police. We’re talking about mothers with children and elderly people. They’ve been locked in there after many hours in the sun.”

This year more than 120,000 refugees have arrived in Greece – up from about 30,000 for the whole of last year. The Greek islands are currently the main point of entry for migrants attempting to reach Europe by boat.

This year’s focus was on access to healthcare, which remains a significant issue. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: "On this International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, I call on the international community to ensure that they are not left behind. To create a better, more equitable future, let us commit to do more to improve the health and well-being of indigenous peoples.”

The UN will also hold a special event in its New York headquarters today to address the health and well-being of indigenous peoples.

Ok, great, you might say, but who the heck actually counts as indigenous people, and why do they have problems accessing healthcare?

Indigenous people, under the UN’s description, are those people who have a set of specific rights protected by law based on their special historical ties to a territory. Many of the world’s indigenous peoples still maintain traditional ways of living, eschewing mainstream forms of society – for example, many engage in subsistence farming. As such, many indigenous communities live in isolated areas and have trouble accessing healthcare; indeed, many healthcare systems are not technically “aware” of the existence of such communities, since they are not recorded as individuals in the system. Furthermore, there are issues of discrimination in the service delivery, as well as a lack of education regarding healthcare in the communities themselves.

When discussing the need to extend rights and cultural awareness to indigenous peoples, claims of cultural destruction and appropriation are quick to surface: “how dare we disturb their way of life with our medicine!” Or, perhaps more commonly, a prejudice against the accommodation of such communities: “if they don’t want to live like us, why should we look after them?”

The point is, in short, different ways of living exist. It’s difficult to preserve certain ways of life when one is more aggressive and dominant than another. It’s also difficult to cultivate understanding amongst the dominant group. However, if we believe in social welfare and human rights, then our willingness to help should be apparent, not only in the access to resources, but also in our welcoming attitude; that’s to say, we can help promote education about health in indigenous communities, and at the same time, promote education in our communities about indigenous peoples too.

Image: Ethnic Tajik People, Reuters

07.Aug

August 07th, 2015

Walls are never a solution

EDITOR:

Ama Lorenz

"We are witnessing a genocide caused by European selfishness," said Palermo mayor Leoluca Orlando as the Irish navy ship LE Niamh docked in the port carrying some 370 survivors of Wednesday's disaster and 25 corpses, including three children, according to REUTERS.

The LE Niamh was the first ship being on spot of the accident on Wednesday at the Libyan coast and had taken most people. Some of those rescued, who needed medical assistance, had been previously brought by helicopter to Italy. According to media reports the refugees came from Syria, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia and Bangladesh.

The drama caused again criticism of the recent efforts of the EU states to rescue refugees in the Mediterranean Sea. "There must be better ways, so that refugees do not have to risk their lives to reach Europe", demanded Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

But Europe still don’t have a clue how to handle the situation. And so the life of thousands of people is in danger by bureaucracy and publicity-seeking actionism of single politicians.

David Cameron and François Hollande both opposed recent proposals by the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, to put in place a fairer EU-wide system for resettling asylum seekers landing in Greece and Italy.

The present European asylum and migration system is based on the Dublin regulation, which forces asylum applications to be made in the first country of entry. And these are EU countries with external borders like Italy and Greece. But instead to find an European wide solution the Hungarian president, Viktor Orbán, is planning to build a four-metre-high wall on the border separating his country from Serbia, meanwhile the British and French governments plan to build another wall in Calais. European politician seem not to learn from history: Walls are never a solution!

Elizabeth Evenson has published a report on the ICC’s work in Côte d’Ivoire and how its activities could be improved to better serve those wronged by the 2010 conflict following the presidential election in the African nation, but also elsewhere.

A major criticism of the ICC’s prosecution in Côte d’Ivoire is that it has only prosecuted those on one side of the conflict, although members of both sides were implicated. A lack of communication, resources and funding has meant that while criminal cases have been opened against forces allied with former president Gbagbo, as well as Gbagbo himself, none have so far been taken against supporters of current President Ouattara.

Evenson reports that: “The prosecutor has to make really difficult decisions about who to prosecute – she can’t investigate all the crimes committed in a conflict. But that means the cases her office does prosecute need to try to create as much impact as possible.”

“The prosecution should have better reflected what happened to victims, across the conflict. Going forward, in Côte d’Ivoire and in other countries where the ICC is investigating, we think the prosecution should do more to put into practice its standing commitment to consult more with victims as part of making decisions about whom to prosecute and for what. Otherwise, if cases don’t better reflect the experience of more victims, ultimately, the court can seem irrelevant to victims and communities in the countries where investigations are conducted.”

A lack of presence in the country has meant that the ICC Registry, in charge of outreach, has not been able to assure the public of its liability through contact with journalists and citizens.

“There’s a lot of awareness of the ICC in Côte d’Ivoire because a former president is on trial. But the ICC can be very difficult to understand – why did the prosecution make the choices it made, which victims can access rights before the court – and the ICC hasn’t been able to provide that kind of information to a broad enough set of people,” explains Evenson.

This has since been rectified with a fulltime outreach staff member present in Abidjan office since October 2014.

But funding remains an issue. “Money shortfalls are the backdrop for many of the court’s decisions we saw in Côte d’Ivoire. This is particularly true for its outreach activities – the court told us they really didn’t have the money to have done things differently. And we’ve seen this shortfall in outreach in other countries where the ICC is investigating, too.”

“Sometimes I get the feeling that the court only has enough funding to put out fires, rather than to execute a solid strategy, whether in terms of what cases to bring or how to really make sure the court’s work is accessible and meaningful for local communities.”

03.Aug

August 03rd, 2015

Calais: fences and dogs for the jungle

EDITOR:

Gurmeet Singh, Berlin

On the other side of a freight tunnel is a better life. Not benefits, not welfare, but a better life; safer job prospects, a familiar language, a strong currency. From a camp called the Jungle, they walk a few miles, leap over fences, outrun police, all for the chance to get to this tunnel.

It might sound like the plot of a Hunger-Games style movie, but that’s what many migrants are doing in Calais every evening – leaving the makeshift refugee camp they call the Jungle, to make a break for the freight tunnel – if they can make the safe passage through the tunnel, in the back of a truck, or clinging to its underside, they’ll have the chance of a better life.

The Jungle, the camp that houses the migrants is horribly under-resourced, with only 30 toilets for the 3,000 people living there. To get to the UK, the migrants have to face obstacles which threaten their personal safety and wellbeing – they are not oblivious to the dangers.

“The U.K. is not paradise, it’s not heaven, I know that,” he said. “I know it’s not safe to jump on a moving train. But we have no choice. If you had a choice, why would you do this?”

That’s the sentiment of many in the camp, which is mainly made up of refugees from North East Africa and the Middle East; it’s not clear whether the term “migrant” sufficiently captures the nature of their situation; they’re fleeing war, political persecution and in some cases, devastation of their countries.

But it’s more neutral than “illegal immigrant” or “alien”. The urge to politicise these people has been overwhelming from certain actors. The UK’s response?

That means not providing adequate help and assistance so lives are not put in danger, and it also means not providing help and aid to the countries of migration. It means fences, it means dogs, which in this author’s opinion is a ridiculously antiquated and inadequate solution to the problem and clearly geared to satisfy right-wing elements in the UK who fear their own perceptions of being “swamped”.

But as one police officer in Calais reflected: “it makes you think, this job. How can you judge a guy who has nothing, who is fleeing war and just wants a life for his family?”

30.Jul

July 30th, 2015

And Yes, Racism Is Rooted in Economic Inequality

EDITOR:

Murat Suner

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said that economic inequality and institutional racism are “parallel problems” that both must be addressed at the same time, referencing the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. to combat poverty in America.

Sanders was sharply criticised last weekend at progressive conference Netroots Nation, where some black activists accused him of focusing on economic issues over racial inequality.

However, Sanders stated on NBC’s Meet the Press: “We have to end institutional racism, but we have to deal with the reality that 50% of young black kids are unemployed, that we have massive poverty in America, that we have an unsustainable level of income and wealth inequality.”

He added “My view is that we have got to deal with the fact that the middle class in this country is disappearing, that we have millions of people working for wages that are much too low impacts everybody, impacts the African American community even more,” he said on Sunday. “Those are issues that do have to be dealt with, and just at the same time as we deal with institutional racism.”

Seth Ackerman, who is on the editorial board of Jacobin, backs up that argument by referring to the history of racism and economic exploitation.

Seth asks: "If racial inequality isn’t merely a symptom of economic inequality, what is it a symptom of?"

The expected answer: "It’s a symptom of hundreds of years of slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow, and urban apartheid."

His response: "Yes. But what were slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow, and urban apartheid if not extreme forms of economic inequality?"

History provides evidence: "What was the point of England’s colonization of Ireland if not to impose a lucrative “economic inequality” on its victims? Was the urban apartheid of Haussmann’s Paris not the “symptom” of nineteenth-century economic inequality? And what exactly do you think all those African slaves were doing in the American South?"

And, if racism can’t be reduced to “economic inequality”, the residual is racial animosity in everyday life - it's the undercoat of structural racism.

And, if freedom means anything, it means the freedom to go about your life without having to worry about all the animosity you encounter.